Moon Duo in The Workman’s Club on May 1st 2015

The release of Moon Duo’s most recent album, ‘Shadow of the Sun’, has seen the band add even more psych-rock bangers to their repertoire.

As a pairing who feel quite under-appreciated outside the circle of loyal fans in the know, it’s important to note that this album feels like a cloak of sunshine in the rain, with a jumble of songs that seem to be cork-screwing wildly down a road yet untravelled.

But do the sunburst anthems stand up to scrutiny when played live in a darkened room? Are Moon Duo out to channel the calm one feels on a sunny day, or something a bit deeper?

Well, first of all, the room is lit up in effervescent colours for the bulk of their set, with an ever-changing light show spreading along the ceilings and walls, giving the impression, at different times, that the band is playing at a 60’s Modernistic exhibition, or a funky disco somewhere in the backwoods.

The comparisons that come to mind when you think of Moon Duo are always quite subcultural. The band are deeply inoculated from the usual trappings of fame, with their artistic ethos based around deprivation of the senses, of finding oneself in the midst of meditative, extended guitar solos that sprawl for minutes at a time.

With singer Ripley Johnson cooing cryptic lyrics towards the crowd the emphasis on words is lost beneath feeling. The calmness inherent and audible in his voice extends across the stage with keyboardist and other half of the duo, Sanae Yamada, swaying back and forth, her hair hiding her face for most of the set.

All the hits were played on the night; Slow Down Low, Animal, Sleepwalker and that’s great. More noticeable than what specific song happened to be playing, however, was the way the audience became a jumble of bodies lost in the music, forgetting worries in favour of the metronomic joy that Moon Duo are fantastically able to muster with their drum, guitar, keyboard arrangement.

At times the crowd looked less like music fans than attendees at an Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, although in this instance the kool-aid was replaced by Stout and Lager. Dancing was minimized by the glut of fans who made it out, despite the bus strikes.

In the end there was barely room to shimmy from side-to-side in a packed house at The Workman’s Club. For a band so softly spoken, a lasting impression was left amidst the confusion of bodies. Spirituality is a strong word, but it comes close to describing the power with which Moon Duo can play.